Medha to protest city airport expansion plan

Medha to protest city airport expansion plan
CHENNAI

As the central and state governments have turned a deaf ear to their appeals, residents of Manapakkam, Gerugambakkam, Kovur, Kolapakkam and Tharapakkam have garnered the support of social activist and Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) founder Medha Patkar in their battle against the proposed Chennai airport expansion project for another runway.

Ms Medha Patkar will join thousands of people from these areas who have come under the banner of United People’s Forum for Survival (UPFS) for a demonstration at the Manapakkam-Ramapuram junction on Friday.

“We are hopeful that Medha’s presence will help us meet and explain the prob lem to Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi, who has not been accessible for us for a year now,” said Somasekaran, vice-president of UPFS.

Even the Airports Authority of India had expressed disapproval over the plan for the proposed secondary runway, which had not been approved even in principle by the Prime Minister’s Infrastructure Committee, he added.

AAI was content with the expansion of the existing cross runway and future implementation of the greenfield international airport and not the secondary runway, the resi dents claimed. Questioning the need for a secondary runway,

Somasekaran referred to Air Safety Expert retired Captain A Ranganathan's argument that the switch over to satellite based RNP (Required Navigation Performance) was a viable solution instead of the expansion to be carried out at a very high cost and which would lead to these residents losing their homes.

Technological expansion would be sufficient to accommodate 30 million passengers in the future up from the existing 23 million, he argued. The compensation package worth Rs 3,000 crore and the land cost of Rs 1,500 crore could be saved for the Civil Aviation Ministry if the economically and technically unviable secondary runway project was shelved, UPFS secretary Brinda asserted.

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